small is beautiful!

March 6, 2008 1:37 PM

Blosxom is an ultra-lightweight piece of blogging software that uses the existing structure of a file system to index and date your posts. The program itself weighs in at a scale-tipping 16.4 kilobytes, and does everything you need to tell the world about your navel. And for those things it doesn't do, there are plugins. At the other end of the weight scale is the >160 page annotated source code.
posted by kaibutsu (32 comments total)

That's got to be one of the the worse way to do something like this. The HTML file is only marginally less ugly than the Text File and PDF. Damn.
posted by chunking express at 1:50 PM on March 6, 2008

As a programmer I'm always amazed by what someone can do in 150 lines of source code.
I explored using Blosxom for a personal project, and ended up using Wordpress.

It's one of those projects that makes you wonder what else can be done in such a small fashion.

Granted, Blosxom doesn't count the lines of code in your text editor / FTP client, etc.. that is needed to get your content onto the file system.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 1:58 PM on March 6, 2008

I've used Blosxom occasionally since back when NTK patted Rael on the back for it, and still whip it out when I need a content tool without database access.

Even so, this is proof that code can be over-commented. That's insane.
posted by ardgedee at 2:07 PM on March 6, 2008

I love blosxom. I've used it for years.
posted by Eideteker at 2:31 PM on March 6, 2008

Blosxom rocks. And the annotated source is actually a nifty exploration of some of the hard-to-google quirks of perl ($! for example).
posted by Skorgu at 2:32 PM on March 6, 2008

Also small: Miranda IM

More small.
posted by Eideteker at 2:33 PM on March 6, 2008

Holy shit. It's like the author came across a copy of Knuth's "Literate Programming" in an antiquarian bookshop, and it ate his brain. Ia! Ia! CWEB fhtagn!
posted by phooky at 2:34 PM on March 6, 2008 [8 favorites]

We use it for our speakers series site.
posted by tarheelcoxn at 3:08 PM on March 6, 2008

"pico" is my blogging tool. Or "vi". And some basic HTML. I think it looks better without an underlying "system", simple and clean. Of course it creates more work since everything is manual, but it also is more rewarding and customizable (not that a blog needs to be very complex).
posted by stbalbach at 3:37 PM on March 6, 2008

it's the broken links in the documentation that really sell it for me.

*clicks "install"*

404

aaaawwwwwwesssssommmmmmme!
posted by MeatLightning at 3:39 PM on March 6, 2008

God Damn. I don't even get to make slashdot style comments on a slashdot style post.
posted by seanyboy at 3:59 PM on March 6, 2008

Eideteker and I discussed Blosxom at the last meetup. I loudly told him I thought it was idiotic because if you were the kind of person who enjoyed doing things that manually, you might as well be responding to http requests manually by off-and-on connecting two wires on the end of an RJ-45 with a paperclip. He agreed wholeheartedly, but then he admitted that his online persona is so wrapped up in his support and use of Blosxom that he probably couldn't go on living if anyone knew how he really felt. I touched his shoulder -- tenderly but platonically -- and promised him that his secret was safe with me.
posted by Plutor at 4:03 PM on March 6, 2008 [2 favorites]

So, uh, I was on the phone to 1999, and while it was telling me it wanted its joke back, 2001 came in on IM and wanted its blogging software back.
posted by bonaldi at 4:29 PM on March 6, 2008 [4 favorites]

I use Blosxom still. It's very flexible, lightweight, and works well. The only big thing I miss is a nice GUI poster. I could probably get one, too.
posted by Nelson at 5:14 PM on March 6, 2008

Companies with unpronouncable fake-word-names DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!
posted by Afroblanco at 5:19 PM on March 6, 2008

*clicks "install"*

404

aaaawwwwwwesssssommmmmmme!

Exactly. Perusal ended.
posted by RubberHen at 5:48 PM on March 6, 2008

...and promised him that his secret was safe with me.

So you posted it here where you know nobody will EVER see it. Bwahahaha!
posted by wendell at 6:00 PM on March 6, 2008

Here's a link to the download, MeatLightning:
http://www.blosxom.com/downloads/blosxom.zip
posted by kaibutsu at 6:21 PM on March 6, 2008

kaibutsu, the link ML was deriding was the one for installation instructions from the 'overview' page.

http://www.blosxom.com/documentation/users/dynamic/install.html

ML, the one you want is:

http://www.blosxom.com/documentation/users/install/dynamic/

(from the sidebar.)
posted by oats at 7:16 PM on March 6, 2008

Afroblanco: Companies with unpronouncable fake-word-names DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!

At least it's not Bloxsr.
posted by loiseau at 8:53 PM on March 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Speaking of bad namrs, I notice that someone must have bitch-slapped Lynchr, since the name seems to have changed to a less horrible PointPic sometime in the last few days.

On point... I tried Blosxom a few times but it didn't reduce the workload much compared to manual editing, so I gave up.

I hate to throw it away completely, though, because the world could use a lighter blogging engine. Text-based storage, no SQL needed, preferably no layers of PHP... this is all good, but Bloxsom's lack of web-clicky-click post/edit makes it seem silly to me. Veering into AskMe territory, are there any other Python/Perl/something quickie blogging tools?
posted by rokusan at 11:02 PM on March 6, 2008

Ikiwiki uses your favorite revision control system as a backing store & has blogging plugins.

You'll need to season the output with a suitable CSS layout to make it 'look like a blog'.
posted by pharm at 2:01 AM on March 7, 2008

I used to use Blosxom (and probably still would, if the blog hadn't gone away), and found that once I had it set up, it was great! Very easy to post (and yes, easier than a txt editor + ftp or whatever), and do all sorts of other add-on things.

Wasn't there a blosxom 3.0 "coming soon" (for the past several years?)
posted by inigo2 at 5:35 AM on March 7, 2008

Calico, where are you? More importantly, NTK, "look at me! I can put my whole fist in my mouth!" where are you? Your missives are missed.
posted by tellurian at 6:53 AM on March 7, 2008

Sorry, that's lowercase (I don't care how good the answers are, I'm not into ticking), calico.
posted by tellurian at 7:00 AM on March 7, 2008

Last I checked there were various versions of Blosxom recoded to php; anyone know offhand the progress/status on those efforts?
posted by inigo2 at 7:42 AM on March 7, 2008

Plutor, you bastard!
posted by Eideteker at 12:50 PM on March 7, 2008

Yet more small.
posted by eritain at 6:41 PM on March 7, 2008

Oh, and re blosxom 3.0: Rael made a start on it, but then let it slide. The user community has made some noise about producing its own v3. Meanwhile on the side there are things like Bryar that look like they already are v3.
posted by eritain at 6:43 PM on March 7, 2008

NTK, where are you?

*cough*
posted by whir at 6:38 PM on March 8, 2008

Hey guys, I know I'm late to the party, but maybe someone can see this in their recent history and help me out.

I love the concept of Bloxsom, and I thought I'd make a fake subdomain and give it a try.

My webhost apparently allows cgi files to go anywhere, so I decided to call it index.cgi so that the url could look like a real blog URL, as Blosxom's FAQ suggests.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to cut it, or even this. The only way to see my blog is with the extremely ugly filename followed by a slash.

I tried making one of those .htaccess files, but that didn't seem to have any effect. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:44 AM on March 13, 2008

Does your host allow/interpret .htaccess files at all?

Put some garbage (i.e. totally invalid) into an .htaccess file and see if anything renders. If you don't get a gratuitously ugly error page your host is ignoring the .htaccess and you'll have to take it up with them.

Personally I use the static generation option and just serve the .html files. I have a cron script that runs automatically to regenerate the thing when I write new entries.
posted by Skorgu at 12:44 PM on March 13, 2008